I know it’s not the only one out there, but along with 2.2 million other members, I really like FitDay. FitDay is a free online diet journal that allows you to track your foods, exercises, weight loss, and goals. FitDay also has a PC version of the fitness journal for $29.95, but the free online version suits me just fine.

You can use your free online account to enter your daily foods and exercise. FitDay analyzes all your information and shows you:

It takes time initially to input any and everything you have eaten in a day, but once the data is in there, FitDay stores the info in a “recently eaten” list so it can be re-used. You can also create customized foods. For example, I don’t need to look up 1 cup steel cut oatmeal with 1/2 a granny smith apple or 1/2 cup of blueberries and 1 tsp of cinnamon every time I eat that for breakfast (a few times a week). I just need to select and enter it from my recently eaten list.

The detailed info and charts on nutrition show you how close you came in a day (or a week) or what you’re missing as the day progresses in meeting the FDA daily recommended allowances for vitamins and minerals. I take a multi-vitamin every day, so maybe it’s my personality, but now that I am tracking what I eat, I want the most bang for the buck or, in this case, calorie. FitDay certainly helps me really think about what I am putting in my mouth. I now find myself making better choices to lower consumption of “empty” calories while increasing my choices of things like nutrient rich “superfoods”. Kale has suddenly become part of my culinary repertoire, a first for me.

3 Responses to “FitDay.com Free Online Diet & Weight Loss Journal”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Keeping a food diary — a detailed account of what you eat and drink and the calories it packs — is a powerful tool in helping people lose weight, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

The study involving 1,685 middle-aged men and women over six months found those who kept such a diary just about every day lost about twice as much weight as those who did not.

The findings buttressed earlier research that endorsed the value of food diaries in helping people lose weight. Companies including Weight Watchers International Inc use food diaries in their weight-loss programs.

“For those who are working on weight loss, just writing down everything you eat is a pretty powerful technique,” Victor Stevens of Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research in Portland said in a telephone interview.

“It helps the participants see where the extra calories are coming from, and then develop more specific plans to deal with those situations,” said Stevens, who helped lead the study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The technique also helps hold dieters accountable for what they are eating, Stevens said.

The study involved people from four U.S. cities: Portland, Oregon; Baltimore, Maryland; Durham, North Carolina; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Their average weight loss was about 13 pounds (6 kg). But those keeping food diaries six or seven days a week lost about 18 pounds (8 kg) compared to 9 pounds (4 kg) for those not regularly keeping a food diary.

The average age of people in the study was 55.

They were asked to eat less fat, more vegetables, fruit and whole grains, exercise 180 minutes a week mostly by walking, attend group meetings, and keep a detailed food diary.

Blacks made up 44 percent of the people in the study. The researchers noted that blacks Americans have a higher risk than whites for conditions linked to obesity including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

“Keeping a food diary doesn’t have to be a formal thing. Just the act of scribbling down what you eat on a Post-It note, sending yourself e-mails tallying each meal or sending yourself a text message will suffice,” Dr. Keith Bachman, another Kaiser Permanente expert, said in a statement.